Cecelia Shao

Exciting news, just announced by Google's CEO at the White House. Flourish Fund has been awarded a $2 million grant from Google.org to accelerate our work to reimagine the foster care system. These funds will fuel innovative solutions - leveraging technology, collaboration, and bold ideas to better serve vulnerable children and families. This fall, we’ll also launch an Innovation Challenge to invite fresh approaches into this work.  We're so grateful to Hector Mujica and team for their support. Partnering with one of the world’s most innovative organizations will be a force multiplier for our ability to transform this system! https://lnkd.in/eenJwDZg

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I was honored to host a fireside chat with Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra (the AI-native startup recently valued at $10B), at last week's Fellows Forum 2025 organized by Fellows Fund. Before co-founding Sierra with Bret Taylor, Clay spent over 18 years at Google, where he played a pivotal role in shaping many of the company's most iconic products. His work spans from products at massive scale like Search, Ads, and Google Workspace (including Gmail and Docs) to pioneering projects in AR/VR and Google Lens. Most recently, he led Google Labs, which incubated next-generation AI applications like AI Studio and NotebookLM. It was incredibly inspiring to hear his vision for Sierra and the future of AI agents. His insights into the journey of building an AI-native company were particularly valuable, covering everything from the lessons he carried over from Google to the complexities of enterprise agents and Sierra's pioneering outcome-based pricing model. A few key takeaways: Lessons from his Google Experience 📍What he unlearned: Google's technology-first approach. In the enterprise world, you must start with the customer's problem. 📍What he brought forward: The ambition to build at the boundary of what’s possible and the importance of controlling your technological destiny through deep, in-house research. The Complexity of Enterprise AI Agents 📍The "Agent Iceberg": Clay described how the visible part of an agent is just the tip of the iceberg, with over 158 complex, unseen challenges below the surface - from latency optimization to release management. 📍Bespoke Voice Design: The platform supports over 34 languages and utilizes a dedicated "voice sommelier" to create custom voice experiences. Sierra's Outcome-Based Pricing Model 📍A True Partnership: Sierra only charges when its agents successfully complete a task, directly aligning its success with its customers' success. 📍Confidence in Performance: This model demonstrates deep confidence in the reliability and effectiveness of their AI agents. Full fireside chat video: https://lnkd.in/gjwNzHGu           #AI #Agents #FellowsFund #FellowsForum2025 #Sierra

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I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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This will sound like hyperbole, but Notion's new product launch yesterday could ~actually~ fully transform how we serve startups at airCFO. Since 2019, we've gone all-in on Notion as our company's operating system. Every client project, meeting, and SOP sits inside a structured system designed & managed by Notion State (who got a special shoutout during the keynote yesterday!!!). That bet is about to pay off in a big way with the introduction of Custom Agents, which will unlock new ways of leveraging all this data to improve the customer experience. I'm sure many people are tired of hearing about agents, but Notion's product is different because we can give it all the context it needs to do work on our team's behalf. A couple use cases we'll be exploring in the coming months: - Creating personal AI assistants for each team member to reduce the mental overhead of project management inside Notion. Agents will work alongside our team, eliminating adoption challenges - Sending weekly reports sharing client project progress, especially around the month-end close cycle. Clients will never again have to wonder about the status of their month-end close, tax return, etc. - Updating statuses, archiving outdated items, and maintaining data accuracy across our library of client hubs & company wiki resources. Agents will keep our data up-to-date & make it more trustworthy/useful to team members The biggest barrier to successful agent implementation is siloed data, and we got extremely lucky that we housed all our data in a platform that is leading the charge on solving agents for knowledge work. I'm really excited to roll these features out for our team & share them with our clients! Shoutout to Bryan Takayama Josh Redd Eva Zivanovic and the NS team for helping us become one of the world's most tech-forward services firms using Notion 👊

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This week, I’m reflecting on my recent trip to San Francisco where I saw firsthand how the pace of change is accelerating faster than ever before. In startup land, speed is always our edge. We pride ourselves on moving fast, making decisions, and pivoting quickly. But right now, things are moving at an unprecedented rate. Whether you’re in Silicon Valley or Australia, one thing is clear: the speed of change is intensifying. AI is transforming industries, opening new opportunities in security, multi-modal use cases, and more. SaaS companies can still thrive, but they must adopt AI to stay relevant, or risk falling behind. Founders, time is of the essence. If you want to keep up (or leap ahead) in this rapidly evolving landscape, let’s talk. In this edition, we cover: 🚀  AI’s rapid acceleration and what it means for SaaS companies 🔐 New opportunities in security and AI-powered software 🛠️ Tips on building defensibility in AI-driven startups 🗞️ The upcoming launch of GPT-5 and key tech news 💼 Updates from Australian VC and our portfolio companies Stay ahead of the curve and subscribe to Ramplify for more insights: https://lnkd.in/gSZajMpp #AI #Startups #VC #TechInnovation #BusinessGrowth #AIRevolution #SaaS #SiliconValley

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